I had a nice Christmas – I enjoyed it. I was with my family and it was good to see them all. Christmas is over commercilised and I really aren’t religious but if it suddenly disappeared I would be sad.
I have had my Lithium increased as well as my anti-psychotic and you know what? I feel a bit better, it has been a pain sticking with the medication and several times I have nearly stopped them but now I can put my hand on my heart and say the medication helps. Now I aren’t wanting to become the poster girl for medication because it has taken me a lot of false starts to get here and some of those false starts have been very painful but right now the drugs do work!
The medication seems to have taken the edge of the voices that plague me and also the therapy is helping me to handle them a lot better, once again I have to say that the therapy hurts a lot of the time; it drags up stuff which sometimes I think would be better off left buried, but looking back I am in a better place than I was three months ago.
All this sounds positive and to be frank it is. Don’t get me wrong I am not about to burst into song and I think I have a long way to go, no doubt I will falter in the times ahead but right now I am still here!
I went for my bloods doing today, I was also weighed as the Shrink needs to work out the correct dose of Lithium for me I have been thinking about medication a lot and why I take it. I take it because it is better than the alternative which is a psyche ward. Of course I do get suicidal, and I am teetering on the edge of feeling that way again, so I guess death is an alternative too. But it is far more likely I would go off on some acutely psychotic episode raving about voices and trying to cut myself to ribbons.
I have been on a psyche ward against my will before and I won’t let that happen again. I was sectioned because I was suicidal and was displaying a distinct lack of insight. Poor Shrink didn’t really have a choice he knew I would kill myself if he didn’t send me in. Being held against your will is not fun , it’s is frightening and totally disempowering. I was coerced into taking mind numbing medication when I didn’t behave, told when to go to bed, told when to eat and told when I could shower. I don’t want to have to go through that again so I take the medication.
The medication helps, it numbs the pain down slightly and it makes me less liable to hallucinate or become manically depressed. The medication doesn’t stop the voices, it doesn’t really stop me being depressed and it doesn’t take away a lot of my other symptoms such as flashing lights and stuff. It all has side effects too; a tremor from the anti-psychotics and a fuzziness that lasts till the afternoon, when I come off them I will have to do it slowly. The Lithium can damage my kidneys and make me hypothyroid. I have no doubt I am addicted to the sleeping tablets.
So for me it is a bit of a balancing act – demons or medication.
I went to the gym and managed half an hour on the treadmill with my MP3 player blasting away, afterwards I felt better but it was only transient and I am beginning to get restless again. Luckily my trusty Shrink has me on a cocktail of drugs including Zopiclone, Trazadone, Aripiprazole, Escitalopram and now Lithium which seems to knock me out for a least a few hours so hopefully I will sleep.
The voices have been active this evening and are encouraging me to self harm, I have managed to resist but I don’t think I will last the night out without cutting myself. It will ease the tension and make the voices get off my back so it is probably a trade off of one lot of damage for another.
Damage is a good word and sums up how I feel, irreparably damaged goods with little to offer. It is hard in the throes of depression not to feel inconsolably sorry for yourself and there is little anyone can do to lift you out of it, it just seems an endless gamut of emotional pain that leaves you drained of any feeling except despair Some of the self help stuff does help but inevitably that becomes a futile exercise.
I am sure there have been a lot of blog entries about depression but they were on other blogs not mine and tonight I feel I need to write what depression means for me. I think depression is just part of my MH problems but I think it is the most debilitating part. When I am very depressed I cannot think, I can barely function outside of breathing, when I am in a depressive manic state I cannot sit still. cannot concentrate and I have the most intense hallucinations. I can feel suicidal and desperate and have a few times attempted to take my own life.
Depression is all pervasive, it saps your strength, your will and it becomes part of the fibre of your very being, you long for it to end but there is no end, it is all encompassing and even robs you of the love you feel for others to that extent that you will do anything to make it end; even hurt those that you love. For me depression is the absence of love – for your family, friends and most of all for yourself, all that there is is a desperate loathing of yourself.
At the moment I can just about manage to get through the day, I do not feel suicidal but I don’t particularly feel very much at the moment apart from the sense of despair that seems to always be there. I have no joy in life I even feel detached from my family, like a sort of disinterested onlooker who goes through the motions. I used to take a great deal of pleasure in reading and writing but I can’t concentrate on a novel and even poetry irritates me now, as for writing even these short blog entries are a toil and merely serve as a distraction.
Posted by p3bbles 
Posted by p3bbles 
Posted by p3bbles 